


Slow Cheetah

by shirogains



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Fashion AU, M/M, Sheith Week Unlimited 2017, Strangers to Lovers, agent!lance, chef!hunk, model!keith, photo-retoucher/photoshop wiz!Pidge, photographer!shiro, shiro and lance bromance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 13:22:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9550898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shirogains/pseuds/shirogains
Summary: There were three photos, of a boy he assumed Lance had found out and about. While the boy’s eyes had a certain intensity to them, he saw nothing compelling or especially unique about him, other than maybe his boyishly disheveled black hair. Shiro could appreciate that the lack of styling was deliberate, used to achieve a certain look that had, in his opinion, gone out of trend five years ago.





	

**Author's Note:**

> sheith week unlimited day 7 was a free prompt, and so the logical conclusion? fashion au. 
> 
> heavily inspired by ANTM reruns, the red hot chili peppers' _stadium arcadium_ album on repeat, and keith's unintentionally fabulous poses (seriously, freeze-frame that shit) while getting his ass beat in ep 8, and plenty of other instances in season 2...

_and I can smell hot asphalt_  
_cars screech to a halt to let me pass_  
_and I cannot remember_  
_what life was like through photographs_  
_trying to recreate images life gives us from our past_  
\- "the sun," maroon 5 ([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yn1cqjuhPs))

 

 

One rapid, perfunctory knock was all the warning Shiro was given before the door to his office was thrown open, the hinges creaking in protest. He kept his attention on the computer monitor as he tapped the delete button, since there was no need for him to look. He knew who had come in. Nobody else was presumptuous enough to barge in unannounced.

Sure enough, the door crashed shut again. Light footsteps traversed the room.

Lance slumped in the chair on the other side of the desk, sunglasses obscuring his eyes. “Morning.”

“Good morning,” Shiro said tersely. He pressed the send button on the email he’d been writing for the better part of an hour, and glanced at his wristwatch. “You’re up early.”

“Yeah,” said Lance, scrunching his face. “Not by choice, though. Have to be at the airport in an hour or so.”

“But you came here first.”

“For a good reason,” Lance said, and sat up straighter. He reached inside his jacket to fumble around for a few moments, and produced a manila envelope.

“Something I thought you might be interested in,” he said with a grin. He dropped the envelope onto the desk and slid it towards Shiro, who stared at it warily. Lance gave him a few seconds, one eyebrow peeking above the rim of his sunglasses, before he pushed it closer. “What, you aren’t even a tiny bit curious?”

“Curious is one way of putting it,” said Shiro, unmoving.

“Open it.”

“What’s in there, Lance?”

“The same thing that’s always in there,” Lance said, sounding offended.

“It’s never been the same thing twice, has it?”

Lance grinned. “That’s the beauty of it. I bring you variety, Shiro. I keep it interesting.”

Shiro sighed, settled back in his seat. “Interesting is subjective, you know. Could you take those off while you’re inside?” he asked, gesturing. He could tell Lance was rolling his eyes as he pulled the sunglasses off his face, folding them and tucking them into the collar of his jacket. “Thanks.”

“So?” Lance pressed, tapping the envelope with an insistent finger. “Are you gonna look, or not?”

“What am I going to find if I look?” Shiro asked.

“A winner,” said Lance stubbornly.

Unable to help himself, Shiro chuckled. “Like the last one?”

Lance paused. He held a finger to his lips, which came away smudged with his nude chapstick. “You mean the guy who wouldn’t cut his split ends?” At Shiro’s nod, he went on, “Yeah, he was a piece of work. What was his name? Lolo?”

“You scouted him and you don’t know his name?” Shiro said. “I think it was Rolo.”

Lance snapped his fingers. “Rolo! That’s the one. Alright, he was not my best work. But what about Lotor?”

Shiro nodded in agreement. “Yeah, Lotor was one of your better finds, given he’s still employed. He fits a very…niche market.”

“See?” Lance sounded smug. “And don’t forget Allura. I heard the Americans are putting her in all their major athletics magazines. I never saw her as the sporty type, but different cultures, I ‘spose.”

“I’ll give you credit for Allura,” Shiro conceded, “but her starpower is all her own. You didn’t do much except push her in the right direction.”

“I still scouted her,” Lance protested. “That means my success rate is at least sixty-six percent.”

“And Rolo? Wasn’t he the one you had a thing with that night after the benefit gala—”

“He doesn’t count!”

Shiro smiled. “So, really, it’s closer to fifty percent, if you’re doing the math correctly.”

“Rolo was a one-off case,” Lance said, enunciating each word by rapping his finger on the table. “A rogue. Nobody could have seen that disaster coming.”

“You could have, if you’d paid more attention…”

Lance started to cough. “Let’s not talk about him.”

“Agreed,” said Shiro, laughing.

Deciding to humor Lance, he reached across the table to take the envelope. He unwound the string, popped it open and tilted the envelope to let its contents slide out. There were three photos, of a boy he assumed Lance had found out and about. While the boy’s eyes had a certain intensity to them, he saw nothing compelling or especially unique about him, other than maybe his boyishly disheveled black hair. Shiro could appreciate that the lack of styling was deliberate, used to achieve a certain look that had, in his opinion, gone out of trend five years ago.

In one of the photos, the boy stood beside a smirking Lance, demonstrating a rather severe height difference between them (since Lance was standing on his toes). Shiro shuffled the photos and slipped them back into the envelope, lifting his eyes to Lance’s.

“You only took candids?” he asked in disbelief.

“Well, yeah,” Lance said. Shiro resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

Normally, Lance had the good sense to at least throw together a loose portfolio for a prospective model. He generally also tended to pick the ones who already had a few amateur shots to their name, or had at least been recruited by a scouting agency before. Three photos of someone right off the street, each offering little variation, weren’t enough to go by when looking for fresh faces, and Lance knew that.

Or at least Shiro assumed he did.

Then again, Lance worked in management, not as an actual recruiter, and he seemed to actually believe in his self-appointed skill for generating new talent out of thin air.

“Does he have any experience?”

Lance crossed one leg over the other, looking a bit uncomfortable. “Not that I know of.”

“But you asked, didn’t you?” Shiro said flatly.

“I didn’t have a lot of time,” retorted Lance, shrugging. “I was in a bit of a hurry. His name is Keith Kogane and I put his number on the back of the last photo. Anyway,” he said, starting to rise, “I have to get going. Look into it for me, will you? I think he might actually be something.”

“You said that about Rolo, too,” Shiro said. “And Lotor.”

Lance rolled his eyes and hefted his bag over his shoulder. “Forget them. You should give this one some consideration.”

“Why? Because he’s—“ Shiro paused to glance at one of the photos, --“cute-ish? Moody-looking? It takes more than that to be high fashion and you know it.”

“I know,” said Lance. “Take an afternoon off and go meet him. You’ve been in the office until midnight almost every day this week, Shiro.”

It was Shiro’s turn to look sheepish. “How did you know?”

“I got a good thing going with security,” Lance said, grinning. “You need to trust me on this one.”

Shiro grinned. “Like the others?”

“Hey, hey,” said Lance as he slid his sunglasses back on, “two out of three ain’t bad.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! :>
> 
> [tumblr](http://shirogains.tumblr.com/) & [twitter](https://twitter.com/shirogains), pls come talk to/scream with me about sheith and voltron


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